Isaac Yu Photo
Bike co-op-turned-committee space for existentialist rumination.
East Rock and Downtown Democrats voted — then wondered why.
They cast non-binding preference votes for mayor at a meeting this past Thursday night of the Ward 7 Democratic committee, one of a host of such advisory votes taking palce around town leading up to a July 27 party convention.
Gathered at the Bradley Street Bike Co-op, they discussed why, committees such as theirs should endorse candidates for political office. They ended up with more questions than ever about the democratic process.
Still, committee members proceeded to cast their ballots for their preferred Democratic mayoral candidate, endorsing incumbent Justin Elicker with 14 votes over challenger Karen DuBois-Walton’s 5. Fourteen members were present on Thursday, but the ward allowed absentee voting, with five residents opting to do so.
Members also voted unanimously to endorse Eli Sabin, who is currently serving as alder for Ward 1, as successor to the outgoing Abby Roth, as well as Michael Smart for city clerk. Both are running unopposed.
As some pointed out, this kind of pre-primary advisory vote is one of New Haven’s quirkier political traditions, and fairly uncommon elsewhere. All those who voted on Thursday will still be free to vote for whomever they choose in the September primary; all candidates, including third mayoral challenger Mayce Torres, can petition their way onto the primary ballot by collecting signatures from 5% of citywide registered Democrats – even if they lose the party’s convention endorsement. In fact, Elicker petitioned onto and won the Democratic primary in September 2019 after losing the party’s endorsement to former Mayor Toni Harp at the July convention.
And more importantly, their two ward co-chairs are still free to choose whomever they want when they cast the votes that count — for the citywide party’s endorsement at the convention.
So what was Thursday’s vote for? asked committee member Lydia Bornick. Why not just simply hold a Democratic primary vote, without already having an endorsed candidate?
The votes in the city’s 30 wards, half of which have now been held, simply indicate each ward’s initial leanings, and inform how each ward’s two co-chairs should vote at the convention, said Co-Chair John Martin, who also runs the bike co-op.
However, as he pointed out, neither co-chair is legally bound to vote with the majority of their committees. In fact, Martin became co-chair after becoming “frustrated” with co-chairs in several wards who voted against their committees. For example, both Ward 7 co-chairs cast votes for then-incumbent Toni Harp at the 2019 convention after their committee endorsed Elicker.
“It really made me upset, and I ran exactly for that reason,” he told the committee.
Committee member Polly Gulliver said she hopes to see this process become more democratic in the future. Around the room, heads nodded in agreement; some criticisms of the process echoed those raised by Democratic Town Committee (DTC) Chair Vin Mauro, Jr. back in 2019. In the end, the committee decided to draft a list of questions for DTC officials.
For example:
• Why does the DTC need to endorse a candidate before the primaries?
• Why are the co-chairs not bound by the committee’s vote? Can/should bylaws be changed?
• And how do we know that a committee’s vote reflects the ward’s consensus?
Thursday’s Ward 7 confab.
“I’m only comfortable with the committee vote being binding if I felt that the committee itself was representative of the Democrats in the ward,” said safe streets advocate Lorena Mitchell, who raised that last question.
The committee could start actively recruiting members from around the fast-growing ward, and remove inactive members, former Alder Alberta Witherspoon proposed.
Martin further suggested that wards could publish a map of their committee members’ residences to make sure one area or another isn’t overrepresented.
Math is Hard
Ward 7 committee members Lorena Mitchell, Max Chaoulideer, Carl Gulliver, Alberta Witherspoon.
Most, but not all, of the co-chairs in wards that have held votes have confirmed with the Independent that they will vote in alignment with their wards. But the mathematics of having two co-chairs per ward means that what this looks like can vary:
• Some wards, including East Rock’s 9 and 10, Fair Haven’s 15, and West Rock’s 30, backed one candidate unanimously or near-unanimously, and in each case co-chairs indicated that they will both back that candidate.
• Others have been more evenly split, including Fair Haven’s 14 and Prospect Hill/Newhallville’s 21. Co-chairs in 14 are still deciding how to vote at convention; those in 21 have said they will back the same candidate.
• And then there are messier results, in wards split 75/25 or 60/40 (such as 25, 26, and 29). What then? Should co-chairs each vote together, denying a losing but sizable minority? Should they split their votes, denying a candidate from their rightful win?
That’s the conundrum facing Ward 7 co-chairs now. Martin, who has not endorsed either candidate, indicated that he will definitely vote with his ward’s majority, while fellow co-chair Otis Johnson makes his own choice. Still, Thursday left some committee members wondering why they even took a vote in the first place.
Max Chaoulideer posited that while the votes themselves may not have much effect, they serve to bring residents of the wards together to discuss important issues.
For now, the committee is focusing its energies on what members see as the committee’s primary function: getting out the vote. They plan to meet once more before the September primary to increase participation in their ward.
Co-chair and co-op manager John Martin, right
Ward results to date follow, with links to stories.
Ward 4: Elicker near-unanimously (no official final vote tabulation)
Ward 7: Elicker, 14 – 5
Ward 8: Elicker, 16 – 4
Ward 9: Elicker, 7 – 0
Ward 10: Elicker, 14 – 0
Ward 14: Elicker, 15 – 11
Ward 15: Elicker, 11 – 0
Ward 18: Elicker, 20 – 4
Ward 19: Elicker, 22 – 4
Ward 21: Elicker, 12 – 10
Ward 25: Elicker, 31 – 12
Ward 26: Elicker, 26 – 12
Ward 27: Elicker, 7 – 0
Ward 29: DuBois-Walton, 17 – 7*
Ward 30: DuBois-Walton, 19 – 1
If the committees vote , then the chairs can vote as they please, what was the point of the vote? This is another party-driving the voters technique, instead of voters driving the party. Why don't the ward committees talk with voters in the ward?